28th Congress of SCTM

Effect of MgO on the luminescent properties of SiO2-B2O3-Eu2O3 sol-gel glasses

Not scheduled

20m

Metropol Lake Resort

E-poster Inorganic chemistry and technology, inorganic materials and metallurgy

Speaker

Hristo Lalkovski (Institute of General and Inorganic Chemistry, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences)

Description

The sol-gel method has a number of advantages over traditional high-temperature synthesis methods. The resulting materials exhibit high purity, homogeneity of nanosized particles, thermal stability, and chemical resistance. The advantages of the method are mainly expressed in the easy control over the structure and properties of the obtained glasses, as well as the low synthesis temperature.
The rare earth elements are of particular interest due to their excellent optical properties when incorporated into the glass matrix. Alkaline earth elements, when added to the glass matrix, improve the thermal stability and optical activity of rare-earth-doped sol-gel glasses.
In this work, the sol-gel process was used to synthesize a series of Eu-doped silica-boron glasses, and their luminescent properties were investigated both prior to and following MgO incorporation.
Several techniques were used to analyze the structural and optical properties of the as-obtained samples. DTA was employed to gain information about their thermal stability. IR spectroscopy was used to identify the vibrations of the structural units, while UV–Vis spectroscopy and photoluminescence spectrometer were carried out to investigate the optical properties of the synthesized materials. XRD and SEM-EDS were used to characterize the structure and surface morphology of the glass samples.
Because of their excellent optical properties, the investigated materials find wide application in optical and photonic devices, such as lasers, fiber optics and LED devices.

Keywords: sol-gel, glasses, luminescent properties

Acknowledgements: The authors are thankful to the “National Center of Excellence Mechatronics and Clean Tecnologies” for the experimental work supported by the European Regional Development Fund under the “Research Innovation and Digitization for Smart Transformation” program 2021–2027. The research equipment used was from the distributed research infrastructure INFRAMAT, which was supported by the Bulgarian Ministry of Education and Science under contract.